[OSM-talk] Bug reporting problems (was: Big sponsors)

[James Livingston]

On 18/06/2010, at 4:56 PM, Ben Last wrote:
> The existing editors (and I include Potlatch, JOSM and MapZen in that) are powerful and well suited to users who understand mapping and OSM and are motived to deal with the UI complexity, but are not at all well suited to generalist users who want only to make small, simple edits.  Providing simple, targeted UI support for making such edits 

I'd been thinking about this for a while, and the talk-au discussion had reminded be about it, but I don't think I replied there. What we really need is a task-based editor, where you tell it what you want to do, and then it help do you do just that one thing.

Click "contribute to OSM", then get presented with a few choices:
1) Name streets
2) Add house number
3) Draw streets from imagery
4) Add traffic sign stuff (turn restrictions, give way, etc)
5) ...

When you click Name Streets, you see the map and can click on a street then enter it's name - and nothing else. Want to add house numbers too? Go change modes. For number (3) it could offer to switch to (1) when you'd finished, in case you know what they're called too.


As well as being simpler, it will stop people (newbies and experienced mappers alike) from accidentally breaking other things. I'd use it when uploading house numbers I've collected, since there would be no chance of me accidentally pressing a key and wondering what I just did.


-- James